Monday, January 02, 2006

Har-dee-har-har

Pronger on Iginla: suddenly I like our chances if we ever meet this jackass team in the playoffs

That-sa good one. Because we all know what a dominant force Chris Pronger has been in past playoff series. Here's the St. Louis Blues' playoff results for the 9 years Pronger was there:Lost in round 2Lost in round 1Lost in round 2Lost in round 2Lost in round 1Lost in round 3Lost in round 2Lost in round 1Lost in round 1

He has won an Olympic gold medal; of course, so has Mr. Iginla. And Pronger helped his team to the Memorial Cup finals, where they lost; fairly impressive, except that Iginla won the Memorial Cup. Twice.

I'm glad mike is comfortable with his money player; despite his recent funk (which is about to end -- bank it), I'm certainlycomfortablewithmine.

The other good news for Flames fans is that it's clearly time to downgrade Jason Smith's rating from "solid if unspectacular" to "serviceable but slow". Chiclets is now almost useless as a penalty killer, as he's too slow to disrupt anything. He's also frequently a step behind whatever the opposing forwards are doing in his end.

When the playoffs come, four Oiler D-men are going to have to play the other 30 minutes of the game, when Pronger and M-A-B are on the bench. The thought that three of them are probably Jason Smith, Igor Ulanov, and Cory Cross is, well, soothing.

All I see is a team that made the playoffs eight more times than the Flames. Thank you for pointing out Mr. Pronger's remarkable distinction of delivering playoff-ready teams (Iginla's, what, 1 for 9?).

Such hubris from a team soon to join the Capitals, Wild and Anaheim one-shot dustbin of playoff also-rans. The Flames have everything to lose in this year's playoffs, and I expect they will.

Iginla has been far "from the most dominant player I've ever seen, etc" in the games against the Oil. The teams look pretty evenly matched to me.

And we all know that Iginla was the only reason the Flames made it to the Finals. Miikka who?

Anyway, sacamano said that if the OILERS meet the Flames in the playoffs, Pronger would outperform Iginla. He wasn't talking about past performances against other teams, he was referring to a possible Oilers/Flames matchup.